Banshee Pyre - XXIV Demo Bike
Thursday, March 27th, 2008
Well here is take 2 at getting a Banshee reviewed in Australian Mountain Bike Magazine. The last attempt (Banshee Rune) got “lost” by TNT en-route, never to be seen again! This is the Banshee Pyre, a 4.5″ VF4P; cross-country / trail weapon. It’s for the guy / gal who likes to race occasionally, do a bit of exploring but most of all have fun and go on some epic rides with mates. That is really what this bike is all about; having fun and absolutely demolishing some single-track and your mates.
We have built the bike up with a pretty solid build up, no weight weenie parts to be seen. But definitely some sensible choices have been made and we have generally chosen reasonably light products without having to sacrifice any durability as we want the bike to just keep going and going. Unfortunately our Manitou Nixon lowers broke and we had to chuck on the only other 20mm single crown forks we had available; Rockshox Pike - Coil U-Turn (95-140mm). Now don’t get me wrong, these are still fantastic forks but they carry a good 500g+ extra than the Manitous we were running on it. However they provide great adjustability and travel tunability which is great for this kind of bike depending on what you want to ride.That being said, it still weighs in at a respectable 13.8 Kg complete.
Most of the components have already had a good old thrashing over a number of bikes and are all still going strong. The frame itself has been ridden a heap and the new bushing design is absolutely bombproof. Still smooth as butter and no play what so ever. We tried out the servicing ports in the bushing axles today for the first time and they work great. Basically you have a little set screw you remove from inside the pivot axle and then you inject grease into the port, this the comes through some designed channels which push out any dust or grit which may have worked its way in there. A great system and really easy way to regularly service your pivots and keep them rocking on for ages.
The new additions are obviously the Pikes, but also some Straitline Components bling in the way of gold lever blades and bar end caps to match up the VF4P links and frame decals. The newest addition we are most excited about are the Industry Nine All Mountain Wheelset; we are running the Enduro hubs (more axle conversion options) with 0.100″ Spokes and DT 4.2d Rims which provide a nice chunk of extra strength for minimal weight gain over the 4.1s. We are running the DT Swiss tubeless kits with Maxxis Crossmark UST tyres; this is our first attempt at running the DT Tubeless system and we are very impressed. They were extremely easy to set up and we had no issues what so ever. The best thing about this Industry Nines with tubeless is that the rotational weight is second to none (except to light i9 and tyre combos!), so they will accelerate like a rocket and make this bike feel a few kilos lighter. Plus the tubeless allow you to run lower pressures, they deform better over they ground and thus provide much better traction as well as no more pinch flats.
This bike will be reviewed in the next issue of Australian Mountain Bike Magazine (AMB) so make sure you check it out when available.
Here are the specs:
- Frame: Banshee Pyre, Large - VF4P, 4.5″ Travel
- Shock: Fox RP23 - 200mm eye to eye
- Fork: RockShox Pike, Coil U-Turn 95-140mm
- Wheels: Industry Nine All Mountain (Enduro Hubs, DT Swiss 4.2d Rims, DT Tubeless Kit, All Black)
- Tyres: Maxxis Ignitor UST
- Cranks: Shimano XT
- R Der: SRAM X9
- F Der: SRAM X7
- Shifters: SRAM X0 Gripshift
- Brakes: Avid Juic 7 w/ Straitline Upgrade Levers (Gold)
- Bar & Stem: Truvativ Team
- Seat Post: Thomson Elite
- Seat: Fizik Gobi
- Bar Caps: Straitline Components (Gold)
Read more for more pics!
